


Despite Everything

by cacophonyGilded



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, alternate title: i can't believe i wrote hurt/comfort fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 22:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cacophonyGilded/pseuds/cacophonyGilded
Summary: It's remarkably easy to hate Jim Gordon in the daylight.





	Despite Everything

**Author's Note:**

> So... Pax Penguina, huh?

It is remarkably easy to hate Jim Gordon in the daylight.

When waters are clear and you’re on top of the world, your club opening and your power substantial, Jim becomes an annoyance at best; he is a persisting reminder of harder times and a professional thorn in your side. It is easy to only remember those times when he wronged you and you let him, desperate for a friend, and easy to forget those times when he helped you, saved you, protected you against his best interest. For the first time in a long time, for the first time ever, Jim Gordon is a simple subject. You hate him. 

It feels good.

He comes to your club, as you figured he might. You banter with him and sneer at him and he is a mouse while you are a cat and it feels _great_. Even better when you get to ask him about his own irrelevance, when you get to remind him who’s running this town, who’s telling this story.

You don’t believe yourself for one second. Maybe he does.

As he walks away, though, the simple, awful truth shines through, and you know why you are doing this. If hating Jim Gordon means you still get to talk to Jim Gordon, then you’ll happily hate him. 

* * *

When things go dark, though, it isn’t that easy. 

Despite everything, he is still there. The lights go out, and your plan is ruined in an instant. You go from crime boss to public laughingstock, and you are  _furious_ , you want to just hit something, really wail on it–and then it gets worse, impossibly worse, because they spray you in your eyes and suddenly you see Him.

The difference between Ed Nygma and Jim Gordon is that even at his worst, Jim Gordon could never scare you like Ed did. Does. Even when he was at his worse, poisoned by blood and this city, Jim was always able to bring himself back. Even under the thrall of the drug that turned men into monsters, you doubt he’d even killed anyone but Fish, and God knew that Ed had never needed the convenient excuse of Tetch to justify killing people. 

Killing  _you_ , as Jim frequently had the opportunity but miraculously never the motive to do.

You’d called him a monster once, but deep in your heart you knew he didn’t have it in him to be one. Ed did. You’d seen him, bloodthirsty for the hell of it. Murdering people because he thought it was _fun,_ because he wanted to prove how smart and special he was. Jim could never kill like that. 

You could, but hey. This isn’t about your morality.

You’re scared out of your goddamned mind. 

And then, in a sudden burst of something that makes sense, something golden and good and purer than you probably deserve, you see him. You are on the ground in a pathetic heap of terror, and there is a man above you, a man the logical part of you recognizes could not possibly be Ed Nygma, because Ed Nygma is frozen in a hunk of cold and unforgiving ice, but that you cannot see as anyone other than Ed Nygma, anyway. 

You see Jim, in a streak of fiery heroism, punch out the monstrous vision of your own long, painful death. Despite everything, despite the distant knowledge that you are making a fool of yourself worse than you voluntarily have in a good long time, it’s all that you can do to hold him, to grip him tightly, to sway with him and cry on him and trust him implicitly to do the right thing. It’s very easy to hate him in the light, but when the chips are down and the lights are off, you still know Jim Gordon as you always have–the last good man in Gotham, someone who would protect you when fear overtook everything else.  

He does not disappoint.

Despite everything, he still grips you close as you scream, and despite everything, you allow Jim Gordon; policeman, murderer, monster, boy scout; to comfort you, to really, truly comfort you as irrational panic sweeps your senses. 

Perhaps in the light, it will still be easy to hate Jim Gordon. While darkness reigns, though, the ugly truth surrounds you; you never stopped loving him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on my tumblr, transbctman!


End file.
